AbstractThis chapter recognises that current food consumption patterns, often characterised by higher levels of food waste and a transition in diets towards higher energy, more resource-intensive foods, need to be transformed. Food systems in both developed and developing countries are changing rapidly. Increasingly characterised by a high degree of vertical integration, evolutions in food systems are being driven by new technologies that are changing production processes, distribution systems, marketing strategies, and the food products that people eat. These changes offer the opportunity for system-wide change in the way in which production interacts with the environment, giving greater attention to the ecosystem services offered by the food sector. However, developments in food systems also pose new challenges and controversies. Food system changes have responded to shifts in consumer preferences towards larger shares of more animal-sourced and processed foods in diets, raising concerns regarding the calorific and nutritional content of many food items. By increasing food availability, lowering prices and increasing quality standards, they have also induced greater food waste at the consumer end. In addition, the potential fast transmission of food-borne disease, antimicrobial resistance and food-related health risks throughout the food chain has increased, and the ecological footprint of the global food system continues to grow in terms of energy, resource use, and impact on climate change. The negative consequences of food systems from a nutritional, environmental and livelihood perspective are increasingly being recognised by consumers in some regions. With growing consumer awareness, driven by concerns about the environmental and health impacts of investments and current supply chain technologies and practices, as well as by a desire among new generations of city dwellers to reconnect with their rural heritage and use their own behaviour to drive positive change, opportunities exist to define and establish added-value products that are capable of internalising social or environmental delivery within their price. These forces can be used to fundamentally reshape food systems by stimulating coordinated government action in changing the regulatory environment that, in turn, incentivises improved private sector investment decisions. Achieving healthy diets from sustainable food systems is complex and requires a multi-pronged approach. Actions necessary include awareness-raising, behaviour change interventions in food environments, food education, strengthened urban-rural linkages, improved product design, investments in food system innovations, public-private partnerships, public procurement, and separate collection that enables alternative uses of food waste, all of which can contribute to this transition. Local and national policy-makers and small- and large-scale private sector actors have a key role in both responding to and shaping the market opportunities created by changing consumer demands.

Policymakers in Sub-Saharan Africa have placed considerable emphasis on expanding irrigated agriculture. This is in response to the subcontinent’s growing population pressure, coupled with production risks associated with declining and variable rainfall. Irrigation is viewed as an important strategy to improve food security and protect rural livelihoods, with small-scale irrigation identified as the preferred strategy. And yet, adoption of irrigation has been slow, and irrigation investments are often underutilized. Expanding irrigated agriculture through increases in cultivated area alone will not be sufficient for greater food security; land and water productivity of irrigated agriculture needs to be increased, and this may in fact help accelerate the adoption of irrigation. Shared irrigation investments among small farmers are going to be challenging to sustain as smallholder households diversify their livelihoods, and do not cultivate field crops every season. For individual irrigation technologies, many barriers exist in their adoption, especially the risks and ambiguities such as pestilence and borehole installation failures; and governments will have to invest significantly more than they currently do in research and extension efforts to ease these barriers. Finally, the expansion of irrigation, especially individual irrigation, will likely create environmental challenges such as aquifer depletion, water pollution, and soil degradation, which governments would also have to manage by coordinating the actions of individual smallholders. This paper identifies the kind of institutional infrastructure and policy support that African agriculture will need to have in place to expand irrigation beyond its current status.

In this article, I explore why China has surged ahead of India in irrigation and water management and in dealing with water scarcities. I offer a comparison of the two countries' policies and investment strategies using a political economy context.

Agricultural EconomicsEarly View INTRODUCTION Agriculture under the 4th industrial revolution Uma Lele, Corresponding Author Uma Lele umalele1@gmail.com International Association of Agricultural Economists Correspondence Uma Lele, International Association of Agricultural Economists, Washington, DC, USA 20037 Email: umalele1@gmail.comSearch for more papers by this authorNick Vink, Nick Vink International Association of Agricultural EconomistsSearch for more papers by this author Uma Lele, Corresponding Author Uma Lele umalele1@gmail.com International Association of Agricultural Economists Correspondence Uma Lele, International Association of Agricultural Economists, Washington, DC, USA 20037 Email: umalele1@gmail.comSearch for more papers by this authorNick Vink, Nick Vink International Association of Agricultural EconomistsSearch for more papers by this author First published: 06 October 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12747Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

Vink, N. (2022). Presidential Address to the 31st (virtual) ICAE. African agricultural development: How are we contributing?. Agricultural Economics, 53, 540- 562. Anderson, K. (2022). 16th Elmhirst Lecture, presented in the opening plenary session of the ICAE. Agriculture in a more uncertain global trade environment. Agricultural Economics, 53, 563- 579. Brenton, P., Chemutai, V., & Pangestu, M. (2022). Trade and food security in a climate change-impacted world. Agricultural Economics, 53, 580- 591. Unnevehr, L. J. (2022). Addressing food safety challenges in rapidly developing food systems. Agricultural Economics, 53, 529- 539.

Through collective action, global governance helps identify, understand, and address problems that spill over national boundaries. Those problems include maintaining peace and security; developing and implementing rules with regard to trade in commodities and services, capital flows, and migration; containing transboundary pests and diseases; slowing global warming; and providing aid for needy countries and peoples. Specific international organizations (five discussed in Chapter 6) address these issues). The difference between global and national governance is that there is no global government. Global governance, through various international bodies and institutions, complements regional, national, and local governance in an important way and is the sum total of the informal and formal ideas, values, rules, norms, procedures, practices, policies, and institutions that govern all actors—states, intergovernmental organizations, civil society, nongovernmental organizations, transnational corporations, and the general public. The number of actors on the global governance scene has proliferated, as has the sheer number of international initiatives that have been started to mobilize incremental international funding in support of food security and nutrition since the 2007 food crisis. Many of the initiatives are reviewed in this chapter, showing that the amount of incremental funding in support of food security and nutrition, beyond traditional sources raised, was insignificant compared to the number of international consultations held. The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program was a notable exception, as well as the Agricultural Market Information System. This situation appears to have changed for the better since the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter examines the relationship between global, regional, national, and local governance.

The World Bank, the oldest and strongest of the multilateral banks, is owned by governments but rooted in the political reality of their unequal voting power. This chapter, a story of the Bank’s assistance to food and agriculture, explains how it adopted an innovation of accessing capital markets using project lending as an instrument to assure accountability of performance to the lenders of capital. In 1960, the Bank established the International Development Association as the concessional window to enable it to lend to poorer countries’ softer sectors, such as agriculture, education, and health. The Bank also developed other tools for allocating capital to countries, establishing norms and standards for other international organizations. This review of the World Bank’s assistance to food and agriculture since the Bank’s inception is a window on how that role and the view of agriculture’s contributions to development have evolved in the context of rapid external changes, such as commodity prices and the debt crisis. The chapter examines how policy analysis and advice are complemented by project assistance. Still the largest lender, its role is smaller now, and questions remain about how the Bank will leverage its considerable heft to address new paradigms of sustainable agriculture and healthy food consumption in the world’s lagging regions, most notably in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has emerged as the world’s largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food security. The chapter explores how the need for emergency assistance has increased to meet growing humanitarian needs, and particularly its relationship to conflicts. We explore the evolution of WFP’s objectives from internationalizing US food aid, as a pilot program in FAO, into a full-fledged, multilateral organization, delivering emergency assistance while addressing the disincentive effects of food aid on domestic food production, with substantial evolution from aid in-kind to cash transfers, and from emergency aid to building capacity of developing countries to address their own emergencies. WFP has filled a void that would have existed had it not responded rapidly and innovatively to meet the growing needs of emergency assistance, now serving the largest displaced and refugee population in the world. The chapter also demonstrates the differences between development aid and emergency assistance. For its achievements, WFP was awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Prize has also highlighted the need to address the underlying issues of peace and security, without which, the need for emergency aid will continue to grow. The chapter shows how cooperation across international and bilateral organizations has evolved and where it needs to go in the future.

Malnutrition, in all its forms, is a critical global public health problem. Food production and consumption patterns are also the largest challenges to planetary boundaries. Transformative change is needed in research, information and outreach, political commitment, and financial and institutional capacity to achieve sustainable and equitable food systems. Change, to date, has been incremental, not transformative; however, it is essential to significantly improve outcomes, an issue which will be a central theme of the United Nations’ Food Systems Summit 2021 and the intensive discussions leading up to it. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have powered the recent food security and nutrition discourse. And yet, SDG2 (zero hunger) is not broad enough; it does not pay enough attention to the growing incidence of obesity, as do the World Health Assembly targets for 2025. Furthermore, the interrelationships of the sub-targets of SDG2 are anything but straightforward. Growth in agricultural productivity does not necessarily increase incomes of small farmers, and productivity growth does not always assure improved nutrition. Increased income does not necessarily lead to improved nutrition. This also applies to the relationship of SDG2 to several other of the 16 SDGs. Increasingly, the concept of multidimensional poverty (MDP) has received attention in explaining food security and nutrition. MDP is substantially higher than income poverty, particularly among children. In addition, the chapter examines the relationship of gender inequality and nutrition, gender and obesity, nutrition transition, and the roles of changing lifestyles, food systems, and modern food chains.

The chapter explores issues of farm size, productivity, and structural transformation, as well as the reasons underlying performance. Productivity growth is crucial to structural transformation, and conventional wisdom held that small farms were more productive than large farms, in terms of yields per hectare. Increasingly, however, there is evidence that farms of all sizes can perform well, particularly when total factor productivity is measured in terms of all factors of production—that is, for farmers of large, medium, and small farms—rather than in terms of land productivity. Similarly, transformation theory has held that manufacturing tends to be more productive than agriculture, explaining migration from agriculture to industry and manufacturing being seen as the escalator of growth, but some evidence suggests agricultural productivity growth can be greater than growth of productivity in the manufacturing sector. Some have questioned the role of smallholder farms, suggesting development policy, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, needs to foster medium and large farms, reallocating factors of production in their favor, as the only way to achieve an increase in overall levels of productivity and food for the burgeoning urban population. The chapter also tests the hypothesis of premature deindustrialization in many low-income and low-middle-income developing countries, including relative rates of growth in agriculture, manufacturing, and the service sector.

Setting the scene, this chapter identifies key recent international agreements germane to the book’s subject matter—namely, Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Accord—against which the role of structural transformation and the five key international organizations concerned with food and agriculture are reviewed. Transformation of food and agriculture is occurring in the face of growing trade uncertainties, demographic transition, rapid urbanization, dietary transition, and growing horizontal (cross-sectoral) and vertical (from farm-to-fork) integration. Meanwhile, conflict has caused the largest displacement of humans since the Second World War. Forced migration arising from humanitarian disasters is making unprecedented demands on food and financial assistance. Economists traditionally have viewed structural transformation from agriculture to manufacturing as pivotal for developing countries, but it has become increasingly difficult for lagging countries. Other transformations are also reshaping the global economy, including financial transformation (a shift from traditional North–South global savings and investment pattern to South–North), and energy transformation (shift from fossil fuels to renewables). Concurrently, the food and agricultural sectors are confronting new paradigms—such as environmentally sustainable food production and shifting focus in agriculture from individual energy (calorie) supply to nutritious, healthful foods, leading to a life-cycle approach to diets—which are influencing how the international development community views structural transformation and the role of agriculture. This chapter sets the stage for inquiries into food, transformations, international organizations and their interactions, and implications for a better outcome: nutritious food for all that is environmentally sustainable.

Action Track 2 works to catalyse a shift in consumer behaviour that will create and build demand for sustainably produced agriand ocean food products, strengthen shorter value chains, promote circular use of food resources, helping to reduce waste and improve nutrition, especially among the most vulnerable. This Action Track recognises that current food consumption patterns, often characterised by higher levels of food waste and a transition in diets towards higher energy, more resource-intensive foods, need to be transformed. Food systems in both developed and developing countries are changing rapidly. Increasingly characterized by a high degree of vertical integration, evolutions in food systems are being driven by new technologies that are changing production processes, distribution systems, marketing strategies, and the food products that people eat. These changes offer the opportunity for system-wide change in the way in which production interacts with the environment, giving greater attention to the ecosystem services offered by the food sector. However, developments in food systems also pose new challenges and controversies. Food system changes have responded to shifts in consumer preferences towards larger shares of more animal-sourced and processed foods in diets, raising concerns regarding the calorific and nutritional content of many food items. By increasing food availability, lowering prices and increasing quality standards, they have also induced greater food waste at the consumer end. In addition, the risk of fast transmission of food-borne disease, antimicrobial resistance and food-related health risks throughout the food chain has increased, and the ecological footprint of the global food system continues to grow in terms of energy, resource use, and impact on climate change. The negative consequences of food systems from a nutritional, environmental and livelihood perspective are increasingly being recognized by consumers in some regions. With growing consumer awareness, driven by concerns about the environmental and health impacts of investments and current supply chain technologies and practices, and by a desire among new generations of city dwellers to reconnect with their rural heritage and to use their own behaviour to drive positive change, opportunities exist to define and establish added-value products that are capable of internalising social or environmental delivery within their price. These forces can be used to fundamentally reshape food systems by stimulating coordinated government action in changing the regulatory environment that in turn incentivises improved private sector investment decisions. Achieving healthy diets from sustainable food systems is complex and requires a multi-pronged approach. Actions necessary include awareness-raising, behaviour change interventions in food environments, food education, strengthened urban-rural linkages, improved product design, investments in food system innovations, public private partnerships, public procurement, and separate collection enabling alternative uses of food waste can all contribute to this transition. Local and national policymakers and small and large scale private sector actors have a key role in both responding to and shaping the market opportunities created by changing consumer demands

The International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD’s) vision for the post-2015 rural world is one in which extreme rural poverty is eliminated through inclusive and sustainable agriculture and rural development, and in which poor rural people and communities, including those who live in remote areas, are empowered to build prosperous and sustainable livelihoods. IFAD is focused on rural people at the bottom of the pyramid, women, and marginalized people. External evaluations have shown that IFAD, a small and agile organization, has been effective in addressing its declared mission. Its dilemma going forward is whether to assist poor people in only poor countries, or even in low middle-income countries and middle-income countries, as it has done in the past. An assessment is needed of whether the current paradigm of average per capita country income is sufficiently robust to support IFAD’s mandate, particularly in countries with acute per capita income inequality. Demonstrating impacts has been a challenge, but then IFAD is not alone in that regard. A vigorous program of impact assessments is underway but generalizing beyond findings of individual impact evaluations has been a challenge. The Eleventh Replenishment (IFAD11, 2019–21) may barely reach US$1.1 billion of the US$1.2 billion replenishment target over a three-year period. The ongoing IFAD12 Replenishment (2022–4) needs to exceed that to secure IFAD’s financial future, including market-based borrowing at rates that MICs will find expedient to borrow at for rural development programs where, traditionally, highly concessional and/or grant funding has been available.

The food price crisis, which intermittently lasted from 2006 to about 2012–13, raised a number of issues about the roles of markets and states in ensuring food security at home and globally. This issue has arisen once again in 2020, as a result of COVID-19, undoing years of progress, but it is being resolved differently than the earlier crisis. There are fewer trade restrictions. Among the issues that the food price crisis raised was the domino effect of the US biofuel policies on maize, wheat, and rice prices in 2007–8, leading to a “perfect storm,” and policy responses of large exporters, leading to key debates about global interdependence, national vs. global objectives, and policy measures adopted by some countries—some of these debates have remained unresolved. Implications for the COVID-19 pandemic and the post-COVID-19 world are drawn in the chapter, regarding trade vs. stabilization, information systems, safety nets, and investment strategies.

Growing differentiation among developing countries, declining capital flows and remittances, uncertain external aid, weakening global architecture, and rising China are reviewed. In 2021, developed countries, led by the United States, had begun a recovery. Considerable progress was achieved in developing countries prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in reducing poverty; infant and child mortality, stunting, wasting, anemia; increasing food security and nutrition; and improving gender empowerment. Impacts of the pandemic on the poverty–food security–nutrition–health nexus and implications for action are described. Agricultural total factor productivity growth across regions and countries shows huge differences in aggregate productivity growth performance. Countries with low growth also lagged in structural transformation. Premature deindustrialization in developing countries peaks at earlier levels of per capita GDP than for industrialized countries. All farm sizes can achieve productivity growth and success, but smallholders require the functioning of factor and product markets, with strong public policy. Productivity growth measures have not included changes in the quality or quantity of natural resources, but that is changing. Overall, the issue of low financial flows to developing countries needs to be addressed, and available resources need to be used strategically to leverage greater public and private investments to food and agriculture. Substantial investments are needed in human and institutional capital and physical infrastructure for new technologies. The G20’s contribution to the global architecture for food and agriculture has not met its potential relative to a promising early start. For 54 industrial and emerging countries monitored by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, changes in their agricultural policies offer scope for improvement in the overall policy environment and investment climate at the global level, including release of valuable resources for building better.

In this chapter, key issues facing governance of international organizations are discussed, as operating arms of global governance in the larger context of global governance of food and agriculture—specifically, in the context of the United Nations’ financing. Governance of each of the five international organizations is outlined: how the organizations were originally structured and financed; how financing relates to the organizational structure and governance; and how the formal and informal voices of members are exercised are discussed, with respect to the choice of leadership and the substantive content of what the organizations do and how. Issues of coordination among the Rome-based agencies, the World Bank, and CGIAR are discussed, given that the world is undergoverned in relation to the challenges of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, confronting climate change, conflict, natural resource degradation, income inequality, persistent poverty, and growing hunger. With greater long-term, core-funding support, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) would be able to translate its guidelines into operations to combat climate change and promote conservation agriculture and its Codex Alimentarius into food safety. With collaboration with the World Food Programme, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the World Bank, FAO can help move fragile countries into rehabilitation, reconstruction, and development. CGIAR can use long-term funding, while the World Bank and IFAD can support the building of delivery systems.

Abstract This book is a historical review of international food and agriculture since the founding of the international organizations following the Second World War, including the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and into the 1970s, when CGIAR was established and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was created to recycle petrodollars. The book concurrently focuses on the structural transformation of developing countries in Asia and Africa, with some making great strides in small farmer development and in achieving structural transformation of their economies. Some have also achieved Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG2, but most have not. Not only are some countries, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, lagging behind, but they face new challenges of climate change, competition from emerging countries, population pressure, urbanization, environmental decay, dietary transition, and now pandemics. Lagging developing countries need huge investments in human capital, and physical and institutional infrastructure, to take advantage of rapid change in technologies, but the role of international assistance in financial transfers has diminished. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only set many poorer countries back but starkly revealed the weaknesses of past strategies. Transformative changes are needed in developing countries with international cooperation to achieve better outcomes. Will the change in US leadership bring new opportunities for multilateral cooperation?

Official development assistance (ODA) and domestic expenditures of developing countries on food and agriculture are often too small, relative to needs or for stimulating private investment. ODA and expenditures are suboptimally allocated mostly to subsidies, with little to public goods, such as agricultural education, research, and extension. Learning and evaluation of impacts need to improve and expand to meet complex challenges facing farmers. The multisectoral nature of agriculture means that agricultural financing must consist of multiple components, with resources that are public, private (household), and private (external to household), coming from six categories: public—domestic and international; private—domestic and international; and household—savings and remittances. Information on “traditional” ODA for agriculture is more available than for “nontraditional” ODA: for example, from emerging countries, including China’s growing involvement in Southern countries, private investments in value chains, land purchases, and private philanthropy. Aside from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), few philanthropists report aid to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development–Development Assistance Committee (OECD–DAC). BMGF’s Aid Transparency Index (ATI) rating improved only from “very poor” (18.1 percent) in 2013 to “fair” (47.3 percent) in 2018. The 2020 ATI reported significant improvement in aid donors’ overall transparency, but less in impact of aid projects. New themes, including nutrition and the environment, pose challenges to estimating sources of resource flows in support of adaptation of agriculture. We show that, even though available aid has increased since 2020, resources are very small relative to needs and the extent of advocacy.

Market reforms have been given much of the credit for China's spectacular growth performance. This paper looks at China's reform process systematically, along with India's, and argues that the Chinese state has played a key role in transforming China into a modern economic state, deploying unlimited supplies of labor and combining it with a variety of initiatives in a pragmatic, nonideological way to promote public and private investment and create productive employment in agricultural, manufacturing, and service sectors. In contrast, India's reforms have been sporadic and are still a work in progress. The record-breaking expansion of China's financial system in fostering investments was initially overlooked, but has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Is China unique, or are lessons from the Chinese experience for public policy and its sequencing transferrable to agricultural and structural transformation in countries lagging behind, including India?